


Lunatic Entanglements

by bgharison



Series: Tenacious Men [3]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Steve tends to overcomplicate things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 13:34:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16766170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bgharison/pseuds/bgharison
Summary: “What if it was as simple as us feeling the same way about each other, hunh?  What if it was that simple?” Danny murmured, searching Steve’s eyes.“Danny,” Steve said, as if Danny’s name had all of the answers to the universe in it.  “Could it?”





	Lunatic Entanglements

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lavvyan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavvyan/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Stealth is a State of Mind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16754983) by [lavvyan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavvyan/pseuds/lavvyan). 



> This particular installment inspired by and written for lavvyan - happiest of birthdays, I hope you enjoy my take on Steve over-missioning things. Again.
> 
> NaNoWriMo2018 project (in true NaNo unbeta'd unedited fashion) a series of unrelated shorts based on a Philip Roth quote in a New York Times interview.
> 
> "The drama issues from the assailability of vital, tenacious men with their share of peculiarities who are neither mired in weakness nor made of stone and who, almost inevitably, are bowed by blurred moral vision, real and imaginary culpability, conflicting allegiances, urgent desires, uncontrollable longings, unworkable love, the culprit passion, the erotic trance, rage, self-division, betrayal, drastic loss, vestiges of innocence, fits of bitterness, lunatic entanglements, consequential misjudgment, understanding overwhelmed, protracted pain, false accusation, unremitting strife, illness, exhaustion, estrangement, derangement, aging, dying and, repeatedly, inescapable harm, the rude touch of the terrible surprise — unshrinking men stunned by the life one is defenseless against, including especially history: the unforeseen that is constantly recurring as the current moment."

“What. The hell. Are you doing?!?!”

Steve made a coordinated effort to remember how to breathe, and propped up carefully on an elbow. The sky was still spinning in circles overhead, but it was moving much, much slower now. Or maybe it was just the movement of the earth he felt, seeing as how all six plus feet of him was in personal contact with terra firma. There were a lot of moving pieces, was the point, and he was having trouble parsing them out in a way that made sense.

Firstly, Danny was standing over him, hands on his hips, the wind -- which was definitely a factor in the situation -- fluffing his hair up and the sun backlighting the wayward strands, making him look like a compact avenging angel. Also first was the fact that Chin was helping Kono up -- oh, thank God, she looked relatively unharmed. Steve collapsed back on the ground in relief.

“Hey!”

It was Danny again, and it was _his oh my God, I’m partnered with an idiot who’s hurt himself again, somebody call a bus_ ‘hey’. Steve would know that ‘hey’ anywhere, it was as reliable as the sun rising in the east. A shadow fell over his face, and oh, yeah, that was much better, that helped his splitting headache. Which was another one of the pieces . . . where was he? Oh, yes. First -- first, he had a concussion. That was the third first. Next, Danny and Chin were already here, and -- he propped himself up again, this time with Danny’s hands steadying him, because Danny was crouching next to him -- yes, there it was, that damn briefcase. Actually, that was the very first first, their perp having been old school which meant the evidence they needed had to be physically recovered.

“The first thing I wanna know is, how bad are you hurt?”

Right. Danny had his own idea of first, but self-assessment, that actually seemed like a good place to start. There was pain, a lot of it, mostly in his head and -- oh, holy shit -- apparently a great deal in his knee.

“Okay, hey, hold still.”

Danny’s voice had gone softer, this ‘hey’ was the _oh no, babe, not again ‘_ hey’ which usually meant at least one night of painkillers and muscles relaxants, which invariably meant Danny stayed over to be sure he didn’t fall down the stairs or get caught in one of his nastier nightmares. Steve set aside the vague sensation of happy anticipation that accompanied the idea. Injury inventory roughly complete, he turned his attention to the next piece.

“Kono,” he managed. Damn the briefcase, if Kono got hurt --

“She`s fine,” Danny assured him.

He squinted past Danny, and sure enough, Chin had untangled Kono from her lines and she was helping him secure the —

“Briefcase.” That’s right, that was the first thing first.

“We got it,” Danny said. “That`s not my first priority right now, babe.”

“Too many things are first.” His head ached with trying to keep up with it all. 

“Which brings me back to my first question. What the actual hell were you doing, jumping out of a plane?”

“Jerry sent me the GPS coordinates when the tracker activated,” Steve said. “There's — there's no access, Danny, how —“

“Oh my God. No roads, so you went straight to parachuting in? This is why I can`t let you out of my sight. Did it never occur to you — I can't.”

Steve was gaping at Danny, he knew it, he just couldn’t find it in himself to . . . not gape. He ran through his mental checklist again. First, they had the briefcase. Second — ah, there, improvement, good, his mind was starting to feel like an Abbot and Costello routine — Danny and Chin had the briefcase before he and Kono had even landed. Or crashed, in his case.

“How? You got here first. How?” And he was making progress, now, putting the pieces together. 

“On bikes. You may recall, Chin is an excellent rider, and I’m proficient in a pinch. _Stop_ , would you — hold still. How, how even did you get — hold _still_ , I said, you are all tangled up, you're making it worse.” Danny's strong hands and deft fingers were extricating him from the tangle of parachute line, carefully, oh, so carefully, moving one limb at a time, those hands moving expertly and thoroughly over his arms, shoulders, torso, checking for injuries as he went. When he hissed in pain at Danny moving his leg to unwrap the line from his boot, Danny murmured nonsensical sounds of comfort.

“Wind gust,” Steve said, through gritted teeth.

“I was drifting toward the trees,” Kono said. She and Chin were standing over him now, too, Kono looking concerned and Chin — damn him — looking serene and slightly amused. “He delayed opening his chute, managed to give me a push to the clearing. I’m sorry, Boss.”

“`S`okay, you did good for a beginner,” Steve said.

“Can I practice, so it works better next time?” Kono asked, enthused.

“Next — no. There's no next time. The two of you adrenaline junkies don't get to make decisions together. Help — Chin, get — thank you — this is ridiculous —“

Steve unsheathed a K-bar from his boot and sliced through the lunatic entanglement of parachute line. Danny was taking forever.

“Steve?”

“Yeah, Danny?”

“How did you and our rookie plan to get off this mountain with the briefcase? And please don’t tell me there’s a cliff nearby that you were going to jump off next.”

Steve rolled his eyes and regretted it. “Don’t be ridiculous. I called in a favor with the Coasties. I wanted to come in quiet, just in case. Drop in chutes, keep the element of surprise. Chopper should be here any minute to pick us up.”

Danny shook his head. Speechless. That was unusual.

“Kono, did it cross your mind to use ATVs?” Chin asked curiously, checking her over one more time for injuries. 

She shrugged. “Yeah, but Steve mentioned jumping in and . . . Come on, it sounded like fun.”

She grinned down at Steve, their arms long enough to manage a fist bump.

Danny sighed.

The sound of approaching rotors caught Steve's attention and he tried to stand up, his knee buckling underneath him as the earth and sky somersaulted over each other.

“I'll, ah . . . I'll ride down with Chin,” Kono said, patting Danny’s arm sympathetically. “You better stick with the boss. That knee looks axed.”

*#*#*#*#*

They were finally home, Steve’s knee wrapped and braced and scheduled for more xrays and examination the next day, when hopefully some of the frankly horrifying swelling would be down. He was ensconced on the sofa, knee propped, blinking up at Danny through those ridiculous lashes and tugging a light blanket around him. Injuries and pain killers always did this to Steve, gave him a chill, and the fact that Danny knew that as well as he did made him sigh at the frequency of it all.

“So, what did we learn today, Steven?”

“Parachuting is not necessarily the first and best option to access an area without public roadways,” Steve sighed. Twenty minutes of Danny’s ranting succinctly summarized in one sentence. Danny was honestly impressed -- Steve _had_ been paying attention.

“Steve, you gotta — I don’t get it. You’re not still in the SEALs. You don’t gotta prove anything to us.”

“It’s not that, Danny,” Steve said earnestly. “It’s just . . . I don’t know. Maybe I’m just not used to anything ever coming easy to me.”

“You saying you just, what, automatically default to the most complicated and dangerous options available?”

“Something like that,” Steve shrugged and averted his eyes, a barrier hastily thrown up between them. Danny didn’t much bother with barriers, ever, especially not where Steve was concerned. He reached out and cupped Steve’s jaw in his hand, turning his face to look in his eyes. He was shocked to see a sheen of moisture there, and Steve trying to wrest out of his grip.

 _The most complicated and dangerous options available_. . . For a SEAL, serving under DADT, that would have been . . .

The pieces clicked into place; Danny hadn’t made detective with flying colors for nothing. 

“What if it didn’t have to be so complicated, or dangerous?” He rested his hand on Steve’s shoulder, the one that had been least jacked up by his disastrous jump. “What if, instead of taking years off my life and turning my hair gray by diving out of a plane, you could hop on an ATV with me and ride? Would you be interested in that option, or . . . would that not be enough adrenaline for you?”

Steve swallowed, his Adam’s apple moving in the long line of his throat. Danny let the backs of his fingers trace up the side of Steve’s neck and slip into his hair.

“With you?”

Danny beamed. Steve wasn’t in Naval intelligence for nothing, either, he’d picked right up on the most important preposition in the whole paragraph.

“Yeah, with me. What if . . . if something wasn’t complicated or dangerous after all, would it still hold your interest?” Danny chewed on the inside of his lip. This . . . this thing that had been simmering between them, the whole time, since the first draw of weapons, the first arm lock, the first punch . . . if it was just the danger that attracted Steve, Danny would continue to keep that last shred of distance in place. But if not . . .

“Yeah, Danny. I’d be interested.”

Danny leaned forward and pressed his forehead against Steve’s poor, abused, aching head. The doctor had said moderate concussion, and Danny had thanked all of the saints he could think of that even in his impulsiveness, Steve had, as usual, geared himself and their impressionable rookie up properly. His helmet had saved his life when he’d landed in a heap, not nearly slowed to an ideal velocity. Danny’s hands threaded through Steve’s surprisingly soft hair and rubbed gently, and Steve let out a soft sigh of relief.

“What if it could be so very, very uncomplicated?” Danny whispered. He tilted Steve’s head and pressed a gentle kiss to his lips, then sat back to give Steve some space to consider -- reluctantly, because, already, he wanted to do that again. And again.

Steve’s eyes went wide, his hands coming up to fist in the fabric of Danny’s t-shirt.

“What if it was as simple as us feeling the same way about each other, hunh? What if it was that simple?” Danny murmured, searching Steve’s eyes.

“Danny,” Steve said, as if Danny’s name had all of the answers to the universe in it. “Could it?”

He looked stricken, as if life was just about to play some cruel joke on him, and Danny had to tamp down on a flare of anger at all of the people who’d made Steve believe that happiness just wasn’t something he was allowed to have.

“Yeah. Yeah, babe, I think it can be that simple,” Danny said, and he leaned in again, and the second kiss was even better than the first.

“But -- Rachel, and Grace,” Steve said, mumbling against Danny’s lips, hanging on to Danny for dear life. “What if -- and Grace, she --”

“Now see, there you go,” Danny said, and he couldn’t believe it, he -- Danny Williams, curmudgeon -- was the optimistic one in this scenario. “You’re making things complicated. Gracie loves you as much as I do.”

Steve blinked owlishly at him and Danny realized how much he’d given away in that comment.

“Danny?” Barely over a whisper.

“Yeah?”

“I love you, and Grace. Like . . . in a way that feels very complicated and dangerous,” Steve said. But his hand was wrapping around Danny’s neck, pulling him in, and yeah, okay, Danny had to admit that Steve had a way of kissing him that did contain more than a hint of adrenaline.

“Relationships are complicated,” Danny said, when he gathered enough brain cells back to form the sentence. “I’ll grant you that. Love, though, love is simple. And . . . Steve?”

Steve was busy, apparently, memorizing the outline of Danny’s biceps under his curious fingers, so it took him a moment.

“Yeah?”

Danny cupped his face again, thumb stroking over the day’s stubble as he looked into Steve’s eyes.

“Loving me, loving us, is not dangerous, Steve,” he said. “Because we’re not going anywhere.”

And, oh, Steve moved pretty impressively, Danny thought, for someone moderately concussed and with various and sundry damaged ribs, tendons, and ligaments. He had a passing thought to what possibly very creative accommodations could be made when --

“Ooff.” The breath was knocked out of him, as he landed, mostly on the floor, with a considerable amount of Navy SEAL muscle on top of him. He looked up, awkwardly, over the bulk of Steve’s shoulder, to see his ankle and Steve’s knee, tangled in the blanket.

“Sorry, Danny,” Steve said, as he tried and generally failed to keep his weight on his least-injured elbow, and settled for nuzzling happily into Danny’s neck. 

“I take it back. Being anywhere in your general vicinity is dangerous, and hazardous to my health,” Danny declared. “And Smooth Dog? Definitely ironic.”

*#*#*#*#*

They decided that the sofa was just too awkward, and hazardous. Danny helped Steve up the stairs, which took a ridiculous amount of time and energy, partly because of Steve’s injuries, and partly because of the distraction of wandering hands that had been given the sudden liberty to touch, and explore. 

Steve was as comfortable as could be expected; his knee propped expertly by Danny, who’d learned from painful experience the ideal angle and pillow arrangement. Danny was next to him, head propped on an elbow, his blond hair uncharacteristically unstyled after he’d used Steve’s shower and helped himself to one of Steve’s softest t-shirts and a pair of boxer shorts. 

“Stay?” Steve said. He was already drifting on pain meds and muscle relaxants, and a healthy surge of endorphins. “I just want . . . want you to stay.”

“Don’t I always, when you’re banged up and doped up?” Danny said, tracing a finger over one of the darkest bruises around Steve’s wrist.

“Not like this, not right here. Not in my bed, where I’d always wanted,” Steve murmured. He couldn’t resist, he reached out and ran an inquisitive finger through Danny’s soft, soft hair. “I know we can’t . . .”

Danny chuckled. “You’re so high, babe, I think we’d have a question of consent. It’s okay. Sleep. Not going anywhere, remember?”

Danny reached over and turned off the light, and Steve felt his hand wrap so gently, so carefully around his arm. He sighed in contentment and let his eyes close. As he drifted off to sleep, the thought crossed his mind that he had absolutely, positively no clue whatsoever about being in a relationship with -- well, honestly, with anyone, his friends-with-benefits arrangement with Catherine hardly counted -- but thanks to DADT, he’d never come close to acting on the few attractions he’d barely admitted having to less than a handful of other men. And this, this was _Danny_ , and despite the assurances that this was simple, and safe . . . well. This was way too precious to risk.

“Danny?” he mumbled, settling into the pretty awesome Tramadol haze. “I don’ know anything about . . . but . . . you know. Don’ worry. I’ll . . . gather intel.”

“Excuse me?” Danny mumbled, sleepily. It had been a long day, after all.

“About . . . you know. With a guy. ‘S’new . . . territory. Be like . . . like an op. Mission.”

He thought he heard decidedly unhappy sounds coming from Danny, but he couldn’t force his eyes open now, so he’d put that first on the list for tomorrow. 

Yep, _Operation Love and Sex with Danny Williams_ would commence shortly after daylight, or as soon as the muscle relaxants wore off.

Like Danny said, uncomplicated and safe. What could go wrong?

**Author's Note:**

> Written with more enthusiasm than good sense, and published a wee bit hastily for birthday reasons.


End file.
